


Today I Think I Will Cause Problems On Purpose

by StarlightSystem



Series: Transcendence AU [21]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Transcendence (Gravity Falls), Dorks who don't know how to communicate, Gen, Prank War, Silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:01:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24500473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarlightSystem/pseuds/StarlightSystem
Summary: Myrtle doesn't mind that her roommate Alcor is a demon. No, what bothers her is that he leaves crumbs on the sofa and uses up all of the hot water. And as far as she's concerned, there's only one way to handle an annoying roommate: pranking him.
Series: Transcendence AU [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1372192
Comments: 15
Kudos: 40
Collections: TAU Discord Recs





	Today I Think I Will Cause Problems On Purpose

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place in the [Transcendence AU](https://transcendence-au.tumblr.com/). Starring... Myrtle from [Repossessed House For Sale](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22281304)! With a guest appearance by Marcia Sinderson from [Songs from the Burning House](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16436564/chapters/38486294)!
> 
> Thanks to [ToothPasteCanyon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DannyFenton123/pseuds/ToothPasteCanyon) for beta reading this!

“I want to prank my roommate.”

The person behind the counter didn’t even blink. “Do you now.”

“Yes. Yes I do, Bertie. _I need to_.” Myrtle screwed up her face as thoughts of the past few days floated through her head. “You wouldn’t believe what I have to deal with.”

Bertie rolled his eyes, although Myrtle was staring off into space too hard to notice. “I think I have an inkling.”

“No, it’s _worse_ than you can imagine!” she shot back, waggling her finger in a way that -- if she were less focused on ranting about Alcor -- she would be horrified to realize was something she picked up from her mother. “My roommate is so annoying. He comes and goes at odd hours in the night. He keeps bringing _sheep_ home, but freaks out when I say I want to get a pet cat.”

There was a beep as a barcode was scanned. “Maybe you should just -”

Ignoring them completely, Myrtle clenched her fists and brought them down on the counter, making the cash register hop. “And worst of all, he has this _awful_ ghost friend who gets drunk and spews ectoplasm everywhere! I mean would it kill her to find a loo for that?”

“You can’t kill ghosts. Could call an exorcist maybe.”

Myrtle immediately stopped waving her arms around and fixed the cashier with a steely glare. “That was an expression, Bertie. Exorcism is a hate crime. Miss me with that shit, will ya?”

Bertie scowled, and scanned the final item on the counter. “Here’s a better idea: how about you pay for your groceries and go home and talk to your roommate about this instead of me?”

She sneered at him, but her expression soon gave way to something a bit more maniacal. “Yes,” she mused, staring off into space again. “Yes, I’ll go home. And then I’ll prank the hoozits out of my roommate.” She cackled as she swiped her credit card in the machine and then took off, leaving behind one very exhausted cashier.

* * *

“There, finished! How awesome is that?”

Lolonja stared back at him with a blank expression on her face, which could’ve honestly meant anything because nightmares didn’t express emotion facially. “It looks… like you’ve put a poster above your roommate’s bed.”

Alcor beamed back at her. “It’s Icelandic pop sensation BABBA! You know, they sing that song ‘Disco Girl’, and ‘Finance, Finance, Finance’, and don’t forget ‘Slipping Through My Claws’, from after the Transcendence when they got a kitsune drummer, and -”

“I recall,” Lolonja cut in before her Master started singing. “But why did you put it over your roommate’s bed instead of over your own?”

A sly grin crossed Alcor’s face. “Because Myrtle _hates_ synth pop. She only listens to boy bands and death metal. I’m pranking her!”

Lolonja continued to look nonplussed, which, again, wasn’t really her fault.

Alcor frowned. “Because she’s been an annoying roommate lately!” He snapped his fingers to make the room go dark, and conjured a flame in his hand, which he held below his chin to cast an ominous glow over his face. “Picture this if you dare, Lolonja. It’s a stormy night. I’ve just gotten back from a really annoying summons where these two guys were like only communicating in interpretive dance.”

“Yes, I remember, I was there -”

“I flick the lightswitch, expecting to be greeted by the warm glow of my rare Transcendence-era light bulbs. But to my horror, they’ve all blown up because _someone_ overloaded the power outlets with her seventeen space heaters!” He extinguished the flame and grumbled his way toward the kitchen. “I know I’ve got more in the Mindscape but it’s inconsiderate is what it is!”

“Have you talked to her about this?” Lolonja asked despite knowing the answer already.

“Well, no.” He paused for a moment, then shrugged and opened the freezer. “Pranking will definitely do the trick. Also, I don’t know if I can ever talk to her again, not after that time she got out of the shower and walked to her room completely naked and _oh stars I need to burn my eyes out_.”

Lolonja snorted. “Bodies are just bodies. You don’t have to be rude about it.”

Alcor grabbed an ice cream sandwich out of the freezer, and glared at Lolonja as he unwrapped it. “Okay, fine, maybe that was too much, but I still like to get through my day with as little nakedness as possible!” Wiggling his nose, he took a bite of the sandwich, and started retching.

“...Master?”

“This… this isn’t ice cream!” His flailing gave her a better view of what he was holding, and she had to hold in a snicker. “This is a carrot wrapped in an ice cream wrapper!” he hollered. “How is this even- No, _wait_!”

Black void rippled across his body and the third eye on his forehead sprang open. Thousands of years of events and knowledge whipped through his mind in the most dramatic way possible, making Lolonja wish she had the ability to roll her eyes. It didn’t take long for him to pinpoint the culprit of the injustice done to him: his roommate had replaced all the ice cream in the freezer with vegetables exactly 75 minutes earlier.

Alcor’s jaw dropped. “What? Why would Myrtle do this? This couldn’t have had any purpose but to specifically antagonize me!”

“Isn’t that exactly what you’re doing -”

“I’m gonna have to get her back for this.” He giggled as the void dripped away from his body and he thrummed his fingers against each other in contemplation. “If it’s a prank war she wants, it’s a prank war she’s gonna get.”

* * *

“And he doesn’t seem to get that fixing a problem with magic doesn’t mean there was never a problem to begin with!”

The response sounded tinny. “Mm-hmm. Does that- and he’s-”

Myrtle shook the phone. “Ciara? You still there?”

There was a squawk of static in her ear, and then the voice cleared up. “I’m still here. I’m meeting up with my boyfriend in a bit and the mobile service in the woods is ratty but it’s fine. What were you saying? About your roommate?”

Myrtle sighed. “Okay. Fast version: He keeps eating those vintage chip-flavored crackers on the sofa, and I’m like ‘ _I thought we agreed you weren’t going to eat those on the sofa because the crumbs go EVERYWHERE and they’re so OLD just like YOU_ ’ and then Alcor snaps his fingers and cleans up the crumbs and he’s like ‘ _see they’re gone now_ ’ and I’m like that’s! Not! ...Urgh! Sometimes I could swear he gets up in the morning and says to himself ‘today I think I will cause problems on purpose’.” She slipped the phone between her head and shoulder, and used her free hands to start pulling books off the shelf. “That’s why I’ve got to prank him.”

She could practically hear the face her sister was making at her over the phone. “Are you sure about that? You could just tell him to -”

“There’s not a chance in hell that’ll work! I told you, he’s a -” (she looked both ways and covered the mouthpiece of the phone before continuing in a whisper) “ _demon_ , so it’s all about tricks and pranks with him. But if I prank him back -- that’s just speaking his language. It’s bound to work.”

She could swear she heard a giggle over the phone, despite this clearly being a very serious situation. “Why are you whispering?” her sister asked. “Aren’t you at home?”

Myrtle grabbed the last of the books -- an extremely heavy dictionary of every swear word ever invented by any civilization -- and gritted her teeth. “Yes, but you never know who’s listening in! You know things are bad for preters here in the U.S. right now. Can’t be too careful. I wouldn’t want Al getting arrested.” She stared at the blank space on the shelf for a moment, feeling the weight of the dictionary in her arms, and tilted her head. “Although, I guess they couldn’t really do anything to him. Being magic and all that.”

“I think you’ve got bigger issues than the government listening in on your conversations at home,” her sister chided, although Myrtle was too distracted to pick up on the implication. “Speaking of illegal stuff though, did you get the books I sent you?”

Myrtle grinned a grin that would’ve been very familiar to Ciara if she had been able to see it through the phone -- a grin devised of years of having grown up playing sibling pranks on one another. “I sure did, sis. Got ‘em right here. They’re part of the prank.”

There was a pause as her sister facepalmed. “Oh no. He doesn’t like those books, does he.”

Myrtle slipped the jacket off one of Alcor’s books and put it over one of the books from the pile next to her. “Nope. _Hates_ them. He’s going to freak out so much when he goes to read a book off this shelf and finds out they’re all Twin Souls. It’s perfect -- well, except for the part where they’re impossible to get because they’re banned in America, but luckily I’ve got a lovely sister who lives in Ireland!”

Ciara groaned as Myrtle continued to replace the books on the shelf, humming a happy tune. “I thought you just wanted to read up on your roommate. If I’d’ve known you were going to use them for evil…”

She was cut off by a squeak of pain from Myrtle. “Bollocks! Stupid book, I got a paper cut. Give me a sec.”

There was a sniff from the phone as Myrtle got up and headed to the kitchen to wash her hands. “You know, maybe this is a sign that you shouldn’t be -”

Myrtle shrieked again, much louder this time, as she turned on the sink and red liquid came gushing out of the faucet and onto her hand. She fell backwards in shock and landed butt-first on the tile floor. “Bloody hell!” she hollered. “The sink’s full of blood!”

“What? Blood?” her sister asked, panic seeping into her voice. “What’s going on?”

“Yeah, the sink- wait a minute.” Myrtle sniffed the hand that was covered in the liquid, and gave it a cautious lick. “This absolute fecker, I’m- ugh! It’s not blood, it’s just water with red food dye in it. It- Alcor must’ve put it in the tap. That bloody _genius_.”

“Wow. I’m kind of impressed. That it’s not actually blood. You know, since he’s a demon and all.”

“I know, right? This is what I’m going up against, sis!” She pushed herself off the floor, cringing at the stinging pain in her cut, and washed her hands in the red water. “That dope really got me. These aren’t just practical jokes anymore. This is a full on prank war!”

“Yep. Saw that coming.” Ciara sighed, almost as if she didn’t support her sister’s desire for holy revenge. “Listen, sis, I gotta go, Rory’s here. Say hi to mam for me when you get a chance?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Myrtle replied absent-mindedly. The phone clicked as the call ended, and she put it on the counter. She stared at her hands, which at this point were tinged a light red, and took a deep breath. Then she picked up the phone again and dialed another number.

“Hey, John, it’s Myrtle. ...From university. I was an accounting major? The one who took everything too seriously? Yeah that’s me. Listen, you’re good with computers, right? Good. I need a favor from you…”

* * *

“What do you _mean_ your store has a policy of not shipping explosive devices to unknown customers?”

“Uh…” There was only breathing on the other end of the phone as the salesperson tried to figure out what was going on. “It, uh, means what it sounds like, sir. We require identity verification before finalizing any sales, and we can only exchange goods in person.”

Alcor bared his teeth at the phone. “But it’s a _glitter bomb_! It can’t actually hurt anyone! It’s just for a prank, man!”

“There are a lot of regulations in this field, as I’m sure you know, Mr, uh, Benderdream.”

“Why can’t you cut me some slack?” Alcor groaned and flopped onto the sofa, leaning way over the back of it at an angle that a human spine couldn’t possibly sustain. “I know I could just make one myself, but it takes so much magic to make a good glitter bomb, and you humans can do it with your own hands way faster. Come on, man, don’t make me use magic, come onnnnnn.”

There was a bout of coughing from the other end of the phone. “Sir? D-did you say you use magic?”

Alcor slid further over the back of the couch. “And it’s not like I’m not powerful enough to do it! I’ve got so much magic from all these deals I’m making, it’s crazy. I’m telling you, the pro-nats can lobby against demon summoning as much as they want -- it’s not gonna stop people from doing it. Geez.”

`[ Dad? ]`

Alcor -- almost fully on the floor at this point -- picked his head up at the sound of Al-V’s voice. “Kid? What are you doing? I’m on the phone.”

`[ Not anymore. They left when you started talking about demon stuff. ]`

“Seriously? They hung up?”

`[ Well, actually they dropped the phone in shock and it broke. I saw the whole thing from their laptop. ]` Despite having a synthesized voice, Al-V managed to pack a lot of amusement into his tone. `[ They really freaked out. It was good to me. ]`

Alcor facepalmed. “Great. Just great. I needed that glitter bomb! What else am I supposed to do? I’m running out of prank ideas and Myrtle is beating me!”

The phone snickered at him. `[ Affirmative to that. Maybe you need to change your strategy. ]`

The demon screwed his face up. “What, like, do something more subtle than a glitter bomb? Mabel would be so ashamed of me.”

`[ Trust me, I’m all for watching this altercation unfold into a swirling chaotic mess, but don’t you think you’d get more favorable results if you did something a little more... communicative? ]`

“Come on, this is a prank war, not a tea party. I’ve had enough experience living with someone to know that this is how you resolve issues. This _is_ communicative.”

`[ Myrtle isn’t Mabel, though. What if she doesn’t get the message? ]`

Alcor let his head flop back down onto the carpet. “Uh, she _will_ , and it’ll be a lot clearer than sending her a passive aggressive email or something.”

`[ That’s not really what I meant - ]`

“Wait. Wait a minute.” Alcor bolted upright, hitting his head on the windowsill in the process, but if it hurt he didn’t show it. “Kid, I think you’re onto something.”

Al-V watched the world shake through the phone’s camera as Alcor jumped to his feet and dashed over to the computer. When the demon logged in to his account, Al-V popped up on the screen, sporting a suspiciously innocent smile.

`[ Whatcha up to? ]`

Alcor grinned. “I had the perfect idea. I’ll send her spoof emails! I can pretend to be her bank and send her an email warning her that her account will be deleted if she doesn’t immediately stop losing the house key on public buses. Oooooo or I could pretend to be her dentist and tell her that uranium was discovered in her teeth and that she needs to start brushing her teeth every day or she’ll die! That’s how dentists work, right?” He squealed and clapped his hands giddily. “There are so many possibilities, this is great, thanks for the idea, kid!”

Al-V didn’t respond to that, merely moving his avatar so it was in the corner of the screen, and animating it with a nonchalant shrug. The demon paused and raised an eyebrow, confused at the virus’s sudden disinterest in his epic prank, but quickly moved on. He double-clicked on the icon for his email client and, after cracking his knuckles dramatically, started typing.

The ensuing shockwave of noise almost knocked him out of his seat.

“WHAT’S GOING ON?” he yelled amidst a sea of various animal noises, nightcore music, and cereal commercials. He continued typing despite the cacophony, determined to see his prank email to completion, but as he typed the noise only seemed to get worse. He glanced at the corner of the screen and saw that Al-V had fallen to the taskbar and was in hysterics, rolling around and laughing uncontrollably. “DID YOU DO THIS, KID?”

`[ No! ]` the virus replied, in a speech bubble because there was no way Alcor would’ve been able to hear his voice. `[ Myrtle had someone come over and install a program that intercepts keyboard input and maps every key to a different sound file! You should see the look on your face, it’s hilarious! ]`

Alcor gaped and stopped typing. A lot of the sound died right away, but the longer recordings kept going, and he picked out the sound of Myrtle’s voice yelling “YOU’RE VALID FOR WALKING THROUGH WALLS BUT IT STARTLES ME EVERY TIME.”

“Y-you knew about this- were EXPECTING this?” he babbled. “You could’ve eaten that program for breakfast! You’re supposed to be on my side!”

Al-V’s avatar continued giggling as he spoke. `[ I’m on the side of chaos, and you’re right, Myrtle’s beating you at it! ]` He wiped a string of yellow snot away from his face and gave one last snort of amusement before his expression hardened. `[ But seriously, if you want things to improve, you should probably talk to - ]`

“Nope! Bye!” Alcor snapped his fingers and the computer screen turned off. He leaned back in the chair and rubbed his face. How was he being bested in a prank war so handily that even his own son was turning against him? Was he really that rusty?

No. He was determined not to go down that easily. Perking up, he pulled a sketchpad out of thin air and started brainstorming a 40-step prank plan. It was time to step up his game.

* * *

A little bell rang as the door to the diner swung open. The room was somewhat cramped, with round tables occupying most of the floor space each sporting at least one or two people. The most crowded table in the middle of the room had five people huddled around it talking and laughing. One of them looked over when the bell rang and their face lit up at the sight of the person who had walked in.

“Myrtle! Over here!” they yelled, waving at her with a walking stick and almost hitting an overhead light fixture.

Myrtle's cheeks reddened, and she hurried over before they could shout any more. “What are you doing? You’re going to break something!” she hissed.

Her legitimate concern was only met with a round of laughter. “Classic Myrtle,” the first speaker said. Come on, budge up John, give her a place to sit.”

John, nursing a glass of beer even though it was only 1pm, rolled his eyes and squeezed closer to the person on his other side. “Good to see you again,” he said when she sat down.

“Yeah, it’s nice to see you all too.” Myrtle shoved her purse under the table and hooked it around her leg. “Haven’t seen most of you since uni.”

“You’re telling me!” the first speaker yelped, leaning their weight on the table and making it rock. “We all thought you’d done something really out there like helped solve an accounting scandal and then gone into witness protection! You should’ve heard John when he got that call from you, he was all ‘ _Beatrice can you believe it, Myrtle lives like an hour away, we have to hang out!_ ’”

“I don’t sound anything like that,” John muttered, to the amusement of the rest of the table. “I’m just surprised you wanted to hang out. Thought you’d gotten sick of us.”

Myrtle bit her lip. “Uh, well, I’ve been busy…”

“Yeah, John, cut it out!” Beatrice broke in. “Obviously she wants to hang with us! When you’re college suitemates for two years you stick together forever!”

Myrtle felt a headache start to come on at that. No one else at the table said anything. The rest of the diner seemed to get quieter too.

Beatrice cringed. “Yo. Symphony? Dez? Lin? Any of you gonna say something?”

“Quit grilling her, Bea,” Dez spoke up, “or she’s gonna grill you back.”

Myrtle raised an eyebrow and opened her mouth, but Beatrice replied faster. “Duuuuude, that’s what I _want_ though,” she whined, collapsing into her chair. She pointed the walking stick at Dez and feigned bopping him on the head. “Myrtle’s back and I want the whole experience. It’ll be just like we’re in college -”

She broke off as the stick was effortlessly snatched out of her hand. Everyone blinked in unison and turned to see Myrtle on her feet, gripping the stick in one hand. She stashed it under the table and then turned back on Beatrice with a full-force scowl. “What the hell, Bea, you’re gonna poke his eye out! Eyes don’t just grow on trees here! Where do you think we are, the bloody Eye Forest in Australia? How the hell is Dez gonna afford an electronic eye if you poke it out?”

“Actually, I’m a lawyer…” Dez started, but Beatrice was laughing too hard for anyone to hear.

“That’s the Myrtle I know!” she hollered, causing people sitting at nearby tables to look over.

“Yeah, yeah, get it out of your systems,” Myrtle replied, starting to smile.

Ice broken, she settled into the conversation, asking her friends what they’d been up to since college and occasionally offering stern advice, to Beatrice’s delight. It was hard to believe, but Myrtle found herself having… fun. She’d been reluctant to reconnect with her old suitemates because college had been kind of weird for her, but in the moment she felt nice. So nice that she could almost forget about a certain entity of infinite horror watching ancient cartoons in her living room.

When they finished ordering their food, Beatrice turned to her with eyes positively glowing in excitement. “So, Myrtle, you have to tell us what’s been going on!”

Myrtle’s smile slipped as she thought about how little work she’d actually gotten done in the past few days. “Well, I’m an intern at an accounting firm, and -”

“No no no, not that! This whole prank war thing with your roommate! I need to know more!”

Nods of agreement circled the table. Myrtle furrowed her brow. “You don’t want to hear about him. It’s nothing.”

Symphony snorted. “Yeah, I don’t believe that for a second. If it was nothing, you would’ve just yelled at the guy. You don’t install weird viruses on just _anyone_ ’s computer. You’ve got yourself in the middle of a bonafide Prank. War. We’ve all been there before. Remember that time Dez ate the sandwich I left in the fridge and I stapled his bowties together?”

There was a round of chuckling, above which Dez was barely audible as murmuring, “Would’ve been fine if the career fair wasn’t that week.”

“R-remember when, uh,” Lin piped in, “Myrtle borrowed my sweater vest without telling me and spilled pasta sauce on it? A-and then we all did a dramatic reading of her Jumpin Tinderpond fanfic in the courtyard?”

“Okay, I get it, we were all jerks to each other!” Myrtle yelled over the laughter, cheeks turning red. “Yes, my roomie’s been pissing me round the bend lately. I thought if I pranked him he’d get the message but he just keeps pranking me back! He replaced all my shoes with high heels. He put my bus pass in the middle of a giant ice cube. Mam made me a soda bread, so I brought it home and turned my back for five seconds and suddenly it was shaped like his logo! What the hell!”

“Why does your roommate have a logo?” John tried to ask, but Beatrice’s high-pitched voice sailed right over his.

“Wow! You two must be really good friends to be pulling such epic pranks on each other! When did you meet?”

“Like two months ago when I moved into the house,” Myrtle replied absent-mindedly, and then faltered. “Wait, really good friends? Why does -”

“Food’s here!” announced a voice. Everyone around the table looked up at the waiter who’d already started putting plates on the table. “Don’t you worry about a thing, I remember exactly who ordered what. You got the ravioli and you got the tuna and you got the bowl of Nutty Tweaks cereal, and…”

Relieved that the conversation about Alcor was over, Myrtle reached under the table to get a scrunchie for her hair. She pulled her purse onto her lap, opened it up, looked inside, and let out the most irritated groan she could manage.

Beatrice -- a spoonful of cereal almost in her mouth -- cocked her head. “What’s up, Myr?”

“Alcor- I mean Al. My roommate, Al. He got me. _Again_.” Myrtle clutched her temples and stared up at the ceiling. “This is too much. I have to strike back. I can’t wait around any longer.”

John raised an eyebrow. “He got you? What did he do?”

“Ugh, filled my purse with snakes. Fecking typical.”

The table went quiet. “Uh… did you say snakes?” Symphony asked.

“See for yourself,” Myrtle replied before standing up and upending her purse over the table. A mass of slithering snakes plopped out, hissing and bobbing their heads. One of them had a sticky note on it that said “Shower drain is clogged with your hair again!” with a crude drawing of a star at the end.

“WHAT THE FUCK!” Lin screamed, jumping to their feet at approximately the same time as everyone else in eyeshot. Beatrice grabbed her walking stick and practically sprinted out the door without so much as making a sound. Symphony was stuttering and shaking as she got up, and Dez was lying passed out over the table. The only other person who appeared unaffected was John, whose immediate instinct was to try to tickle one of the snakes under the jaw, a gesture that the snake seemed to appreciate.

Myrtle barely took any of that in. She put her keys, bus pass and phone back in her purse, slapped some cash on the table to pay for her food that she didn’t eat, and marched out of the diner. It had started to rain, and she ended up getting on the wrong bus -- one that would take her an extra 30 minutes to get home -- but she didn’t care. The entire ride, her thoughts were focused on one thing and one thing alone.

Righteous. Prank-y. Revenge.

When Myrtle got home, the first thing she noticed was the sound of the shower running. Stepping into the living room, she noticed that the bathroom door was wide open, and though she couldn’t see in, she was sure that inside she’d find a fully-clothed demon using up all of the hot water. Which was just fine, because it meant he wouldn’t notice what she was doing.

Tiptoeing around the door, she made her way across the room and up the stairs. Alcor might have gotten her numerous times since her last prank, but she had one final trick up her sleeve that was sure to finish him off once and for all. In her room, she crawled under the bed and pulled out a box containing two items. One was a weird doll she’d bought at an estate sale and made some modifications to. The other was a canister of ectoplasm that she’d been collecting from Alcor’s ghost friend every time she came over and made a mess of the place.

Trying not to cackle with excitement, Myrtle unscrewed the lid of the canister. It was Alcor’s turn to be the one covered in ghost gunk.

Once the doll had been filled to the brim with unearthly goop, Myrtle returned to the landing at the top of the stairs. She lifted a loose floor panel and peered down to the room below. Prank supplies in place, all she had to do now was wait.

* * *

The knob made a loud squeak as Alcor turned the shower off. He stepped out, stretching his arms and legs as if to relieve the tension from standing for four hours, although in truth it was mostly so he had an excuse to make a bunch of popping noises from his joints. With a wave of his hand, the 13 empty wine glasses stacked in the soap tray disappeared and the waterproof karaoke machine he’d been using turned back into a toilet. He smiled -- it really had been quite a relaxing shower.

His suit was sopping wet -- darn it, he _knew_ he’d forgotten something when he got in, normal people take their clothes off before getting in the shower don’t they -- but with a snap of his fingers it was pristine and dry once more. Then he thought better of it and snapped his fingers again, replacing his suit with a pair of old-timey striped pyjamas, complete with a nightcap and fuzzy slippers. After such a long shower, all he wanted to do was relax in his room and watch the Used To Be About Murder Mysteries channel on TV.

He yawned, and then paused. The floor was bathed in steam from the shower, but there also appeared to be fog coming _in_ from the living room. It didn’t smell like smoke and it didn’t look like the fumes from the shitty glitter bomb he’d hidden in the ceiling to surprise his roommate that night. He poked his head out the door and found himself face-to-face with a translucent figure floating in the middle of the room.

“Ooooooooooo,” the figure moaned, waving its arms, one of which was holding a margarita glass. “I’m the ghost of all the cool people you’ve ever met. We have one very important request for the Dreambender tonight: to get completely sloshed!”

Alcor narrowed his eyes. “What are you doing, Marcia?”

The figure solidified, although there remained a wispy nature to the edges of her body. “What do you think I’m doing, dummy? I’m inviting you out! Come _on_ , you said you wanted me to enjoy my time as a ghost, so let’s get to a club already, I’m _dyyyyying_ to do some partying! Geddit? Dying? _Cause I’m your dead sister_? Haha!” She shook violently as she laughed, making sickly slivers of her form fly off and land around the room.

“No!” the demon barked, a little too loudly. There was a thump overhead, but he was too annoyed to give any attention to it. “That’s not what I meant. I said you’ve only got so much time as a ghost before your mind falls apart and that you should spend it fulfilling your last desires. Not dragging me to parties every night!”

Marcia placed her hands on her hips and pouted, not noticing or not caring that her drink was now slowly sliding out of the glass onto the floor. “What if my last desire is to party with my long lost brother? Come on, what are you doing that’s so much more important?”

“I don’t like parties. They’re not fun for me. You know that.” He walked over to the sofa and sat down, putting his head between his knees. “Plus, I’ve got this whole thing with my roommate going on, and -”

“Seriously?” Marcia yelped, careening across the room to press her face up against his. “You’re still doing this whole prank war thing? Al, that’s so _boring_! You’re not even pranking each other for the fun of it, you’re just doing it so you don’t have to talk about what she did to you!”

He scowled. “What would you know about it? Besides, if you want it to stop so badly, you could help out like I asked you to -”

“Ugh, no way! Not this again!” Marcia interrupted. She glared at him in a way that probably would’ve looked intimidating if not for the words “SEXIEST ROCKSTAR ON EARTH” written on her face in glitter pen. “I’m not gonna spend five hours possessing a microwave so when she comes home and puts her food in I can say ‘ _I’m sorry Myrtle, I can’t let you do that_ ’!”

Alcor picked his head up, unable to keep himself from smirking. “Okay, but what about -”

“I’m not gonna sing that weird ‘I won’t ever give you up’ or whatever song either! I don’t get these references! They’re _boring_ just like _you_!”

Alcor fully resigned himself to laughing at this point, doubling over and banging his fists on the table. “It sucks that you don’t know how funny that is,” he managed to get out between hoots. “Okay okay okay, let me try to explain meme culture -” Picking his head up, he noticed Marcia had flown to the stairs on the other side of the room. “Hey, where are you going?”

She stuck her tongue out at him. “I’m gonna find your roommate and she’s gonna come down here and you two are gonna talk so you can finally stop being boring and come party with me!”

“Wait, don’t -” he called out, and then faltered. He glanced up, hearing for the first time the tap-tap-tap of heeled shoes above. “You said she’s upstairs? That’s perfect!”

Marcia slumped over on the stairs. “What _now_ , bozo?”

“I’ve got a prank already locked and loaded upstairs,” he replied, getting off the sofa and rubbing his hands together. “It’s such a good one too, she’ll have to finally admit defeat!”

“And then what?” Marcia spat as Alcor galloped over to a wall panel with a giddy smile on his face. “Then you’ll do a super cool victory speech and tell her what you’re upset about?”

“Nah. She’ll be able to figure it out from the prank. That’s how it worked with Mabel!”

Marcia could only splutter in response to that, but Alcor paid it no mind. He pulled a key out of his hat, unlocked the panel, and was greeted by a number of switches labeled with things like “HEAVY DUTY BUBBLE BATH CASCADE”, “AWKWARD FAMILY QUESTIONS”, and “PIE LAUNCHER”. Flipping the last one, he began to turn back to Marcia to explain just how much more he knew about family dynamics than she did.

The next few moments went by in slow motion.

Alcor heard the pie launcher go off upstairs. There was a shriek, followed by the sound of someone collapsing to the floor. He didn’t have time to gloat about it, however, because just as Marcia came back in sight, something dropped from the ceiling on a string to hang right at his eye level. A very familiar looking stuffed bear with crossed eyes and a slack jawed cackle frozen on its face. A face that Alcor had very dearly hoped never to lay eyes on again.

Bear-O.

A recording buried inside it started to play Myrtle’s voice. “LAUNDRY DETERGENT IS EXPENSIVE AND YOUR CLOTHES AREN’T REAL -”

Alcor screamed at the top of his lungs and shot directly up through the ceiling.

Myrtle, lying face down on the floor after being hit square in the back by a flying pie, picked her head up at the sound of screaming, and was soon greeted by her fully-solid roommate looking as if he’d seen a ghost- no wait, a demon- no wait, a _fanfic writer_. He came to a halt in the middle of the room, clutching his stomach and hyperventilating. Not a moment later, the pie launcher activated again, splattering the demon in the face with rhubarb and whipped cream, and knocking him backward against the wall. He looked so defeated that Myrtle felt a tiny bit guilty for the great guffaws that escaped her throat.

And then the floor caved in.

Myrtle shrieked again as she tumbled through the air. Her eyes met Bear-O’s just as the latter finished playing its recording. There was a click, and a stream of ectoplasm spewed out of its mouth, completely coating her in goo. She landed on the rug with a thud. A moment later, Alcor phased through the ceiling and landed in the corner, his face still hidden by a pie tin.

Marcia watched this all happen, jaw dropped so far it threatened to break off of her face. She downed what remained of her drink in one gulp and threw the glass on the floor. “This is why I shouldn’t party with dorks,” she mumbled, getting up. “Great pranks, great pranks you two. I bet you both totally understand why the other one was mad at you now, right?”

“You were mad at me?” Alcor and Myrtle said at the same time.

Marcia went to the kitchen to fix herself another drink.

* * *

“So maybe we had a bit of a communication breakdown.”

Alcor, finishing up fixing the hole in the ceiling, nodded in agreement. He wiped the sweat from his brow -- because pretending was fun -- and looked over to see Myrtle stepping out of the bathroom in a towel robe. Ghostly slime still lingered in her hair from the incident, but it was less than there had been after the first three showers.

“Yeah, maybe,” he said, floating to the ground. “I’m sorry. This got way out of hand.”

She giggled. “It did. But that’s partially my fault too, and I’m sorry.”

“I’d understand if you didn’t want to be roommates anymore -”

“Oh, stick a pin in it,” she interrupted. “This was your house first, you should get to stay.”

“I don’t really need a house though. It’s kinda just a fun thing for me.” He looked away, staring at the setting sun through the living room window. “But you’re a real person. You need it more. I can’t take that away from you.”

“Maybe we both need it.” She waited for a response, but he still didn’t seem to want to meet her eyes. “Al. Calling yourself ‘not a real person’ is kind of a red flag, I think. Makes me worry just a tad about what’s going on in that head of yours. And if living in a house helps with that mess in there then I don’t want to take it away from you either.”

“Um. Thanks.”

Myrtle smirked. “Besides, I don’t mind having a roommate, and I kinda wanna get to know you. You seem cool. Anyone who can pull off that many pranks in such a short time frame is a worthy adversary- or, uh, roomie.”

“Well, I try my best,” he replied, scratching his head, his saddened expression falling away in favor of awkward pride. He moved onto the windowsill and sat with his back against the glass. “I never would’ve survived growing up with my sister if I hadn’t learned the fine art of pranking. It was prank-or-be-pranked, man! And don’t even get me started on my great uncle…”

“Whoa, hang on. You used to prank your sister? No way, me too! Ciara’s six years older than me and she’s _so tall_ and she’d do annoying big sister stuff all the time. I had no choice but to prank her!” Myrtle paused, noticing how intrigued Alcor looked, and found herself making the same half-proud half-embarrassed face he’d been a moment earlier. “But, uh, I’m sure you don’t wanna hear any of that. Demon prank wars are bound to be way more interesting than anything we can manage.”

Alcor snorted. “First of all, my sister is human. Or, was I guess, since she died ages ago, but I like to hang out with her reincarnations. You’ve, uh, met one of them already.” He nodded toward the entrance to the kitchen, where the sounds of glasses clinking and liquids being mixed together could be heard.

Myrtle cringed. “Yeah, that does explain some things, and like I didn’t think demons could be related to each other, but I wasn’t going to be rude and say anything about it, although now that I think about it a demon having a human sister is actually weirder, so uh… Go on, though. You probably kicked her butt all the time, right?”

“What? No way!” he blurted. “Demons _suck_ at subtlety. Have you ever heard of a demon making a quiet and unassuming entrance? Nah, they- _we_ may be good at causing huge magical disasters and shit, but playing complicated practical jokes on people is totally different. I’d still say I’m pretty good at it, but Mabel always won in the end.”

“That’s another thing we’ve got in common, then. My sis was heaps better than me at pranking too. Shoulda figured with a six-year age difference that I didn’t really have a chance. But I guess we were having too much fun pranking each other for me to really care.”

Alcor smiled weakly and looked back out the window. “Yeah, me too. I wonder if, whenever you did something annoying, my mind jumped from ‘annoying roommate’ to ‘prank time’ to ‘this is fun’ without ever checking if we were on the same page.”

“Oh nooooooo,” Myrtle moaned, frightening Alcor into falling off the windowsill and knocking over a lamp with his wing. “You’re right. My friends were right. _My sister was right_. I’ve only ever lived with family or in a dorm before. I thought you’d just understand what I was thinking all the time but we’d have to actually know each other first for that to happen, oh stars it’s so obvious blaaaaaargh.”

Still on the floor, Alcor laughed -- a sweet, friendly laugh rather than all of the conniving cackling he’d been doing over the last week. “Then it’s official! We’re both dumbasses. Maybe we need to revisit those roommate boundaries we set up.”

“Good idea. I’ve got one: let’s put down _‘do not cause problems on purpose_ ’.”

“Best idea I’ve heard all day!” Alcor stood up, dusted himself off, and offered Myrtle a hand. “Maybe we should hang out more too. We could be friends instead of just roomies.”

Myrtle considered his hand, considered the amount of pie she could still see under his claws, and broke into a massive grin. “Yeah,” she said, taking it and letting him help her up. “I think I’d like that.”

“WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” boomed a voice from right beside them, startling them both into falling over again. “Sounds like we’ve made some steps toward conflict resolutiooooooooon!”

“Marica, what the _hell_!” Alcor wheezed, clutching his chest.

“Can’t you see we’re in the middle of something?” Myrtle yelled.

“Sure can! It was beauuuuutiful!” Marcia warbled as if singing a song. “And now that you two are buds again there’s nothing stopping the three of us going to the biggest nightclub in town and getting TANKED! I know Dream Boy over here’s got some hidden moves on the dancefloor if you whine at him just right but I’m pumped to see what Miss Yell’s got in store! Come on!”

With that, Marcia grabbed the two of them by the scruff of the neck and dragged them out the door, laughing and chanting loudly the whole time. Alcor and Myrtle met eyes and the former facepalmed.

“I don’t know what I was thinking, giving her a body and letting her eat Nutty Tweaks cereal. She’s so strong.”

Myrtle ground her teeth together. “How dare she just drag us off to a party? We were bonding!”

“I know, I’m so sorry, she’s been acting up so much lately. It’s driving me through the wall.”

“Really? Ugh! She needs to stop acting like this!”

Myrtle paused, and the tips of her mouth curled up into a wicked smile.

“Let’s prank her.”


End file.
